Great parallels in the Old Testament and New Testament accounts are often an encouragement to me. There are big ones and small ones. This is a big one.
There are only two men in the Bible through whom God saved humanity. Noah and Jesus. One was fully human and God saved people through preserving him and his progeny, and one was fully God and fully human, and God saves people through his forgiveness and new life. Noah was a righteous man in a world of violence and sexual boundarylessness. The Bible says in hebrew that the design of God "yasar" had been turned to evil intent "yeser" in the hearts of men. Two words so close in sound, so significant in the Bible. God's good design turned to evil by the human heart. A solution was needed, so God found a righteous man, Noah. When the floods were finished, a dove returned to Noah with an olive leaf. It was a dove that landed on Jesus at his baptism. The dove became a symbol of Hope, that there could be life again. The dove is powerful in his meekness in both instances.
When the rain stopped, God told Noah he would place a sign in the sky as a reminder that he would never flood the whole earth again - the sign was a bow. The hebrew says "bow" not "rainbow," there was no such thing yet. A bow, paired with an arrow is something Noah would have known to be an implement for killing. So God is going to make this sign of killing into a sign of life and grace. Rainbows appear after rain, and to Noah, rain would have been a powerful memory of death. But now after it rained, the bow in the sky was a beautiful reminder of life. An implement of killing would be a sign of life and grace. The rain that had killed would now issue forth that sign of life.
Turn to the New Testament, where we learn that the problem of sin is what keeps people from being able to have a relationship with our perfectly good God. God sent a man, Jesus - the righteous one, to address this. Through Jesus God offers the new covenant of forgiveness that will forever offer grace and life to those who will accept it. The sign of this covenant? An implement of killing - a cross. A place where human beings put people to death, would now be a sign of how God will offer life through the one righteous savior. A symbol of death - a cross, now the sign of God's new covenant of life.
Turning something that people use for death, into something that God uses as a sign of life is so, well, so much like our God. Using the dark side of human hearts as the means to life. Only God does this this way. If you read the bible closely you'll see that he does this a lot.
Two men, two covenants, two symbols of death turned into symbols of life. Thank God.
